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Pete McMartin: Giving anti-gentrification the business in the Downtown Eastside

Community leaders believe businesses can help revitalize the area for everyone

Wes Regan, executive director of the newly formed Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Area in the Downtown Eastside, which is holding a session this week to counteract the anti-gentrification anarchists that have been in the news lately.

Photograph by: Arlen Redekop
, Vancouver Sun

On a city map, said Wes Regan, it was known as “The Doughnut Hole.”

On every side of the Downtown Eastside, there were business improvement associations promoting the economic health of their neighbourhoods: Strathcona, Chinatown, Yaletown. The DTES had none.

Meanwhile, the public could be forgiven for thinking this vacuum existed by default — that the only businesses the neighbourhood could support were freelance drug sales, welfare cheque-cashing and the care and feeding of an insatiable poverty industry.

Two years ago, that changed. The oddly — dare I say it? — gentrified-sounding Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association was formed. It has a total membership of 500. Regan, who lives in Strathcona and has a degree in human geography from Simon Fraser University, is its executive director.

Unlike many BIAs that are all about business, this one recognized that the difficult terrain it exists in dictates that it has to be different.

“We wanted to start a BIA that was more inclusive and innovative,” he said, “and one that was aware of the local representatives and residents, while respecting the fact that we are a pro-business organization.”

And just in time, too, to run headlong into a public-relations nightmare. Poverty activists wailing about yuppie gentrification. Demonstrators picketing upscale eateries. A sidewalk sandwich board filched and — oh, the horror — held hostage.

In short, fun times! It wasn’t just yuppies that found themselves dining well in the DTES — it was the media.

Gentrification: Here was something new on the neighbourhood’s menu, a welcome change from the decades-old diet of drug abuse and mental illness.

Problem was, the more moderate fare Hastings Crossing BIA was offering got ignored. Here was a local neighbourhood group that had as much right to claim it represented local interests as anyone, but all the coverage was about “class struggle” and acts of vandalism.

“Overall,” Regan said, “the self-styled anarchists are a very small minority. But obviously, getting windows smashed or having signs stolen is a sexier story.

“But these sorts of things are bombastic. They’re sensationalist, and we think it’s unhealthy that so much attention is being paid to them. There’s been a disproportionate amount of coverage of the negatives of the area.”

Regan isn’t an apologist for business. He believes that welfare rates for housing have to rise from the present $375 a month. He believes the city and provincial governments have to protect and increase the stock of low-income housing in the neighbourhood.

“But the other side of the coin,” he said, “is that just raising welfare rates and creating social housing is not going to create a sustainable community here. We need businesses that can help revitalize the area.”

To put that message out, the BIA is hosting a public information session at 5:30 p.m. tonight (Wednesday) at the Lost and Found Cafe, 33 W. Hastings.

“In response to the recent vandalism directed at businesses,” the announcement reads, “a lot of people were asking us what we as a BIA are doing in regards to safety and crime prevention. This event will highlight the community partnerships between low-income residents, businesses, community associations and the VPD around theses issues and is a powerful example of a community that isn’t nearly divided as anti-gentrification activists would have us believe.”

One of the speakers at the event will be Const. Wes Fung, a 28-year veteran with the Vancouver police department and a Chinatown-Gastown neighbourhood police officer.

Fung and I spoke Monday, and he mentioned a piece he wrote for the Georgia Straight last year. In it, he gave his views about the neighbourhood and gentrification. Some of that piece deserves to be reprinted here.

“Contrary to public perception,” he wrote, “not everyone in the DTES is drug addicted, mentally ill, or a dangerous felon. Having worked the area for the past three years I have come to know many of the longtime residents. There are a lot of good people who are passionate about the neighbourhood because it’s home. Their frustration is palpable because they know the community can be much more than what it is …

“For far too long, the DTES has been enveloped in a smothering cloud of negativity, but the shroud is slowly lifting. This renaissance is being lead by new entrepreneurs, developers and young families who are aware of the challenges faced by the residents and want their participation to help make the neighbourhood a better place.”

Wes Regan, executive director of the newly formed Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Area in the Downtown Eastside, which is holding a session this week to counteract the anti-gentrification anarchists that have been in the news lately.

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